Yesterday I went to eBay and searched on the string "vintage photo." I got 417,368 hits. The first item in that catalog is reproduced above. So many of the subsequent ones were almost as bizarre.
Happy viewing! Please report back here in the Comments with your own best finds!
The strongman Antonio Barichievich (1925-2003), aka the Great Antonio, seems Weird-Universe worthy. Here's a few brief facts about his life (via wikipedia and mrkurtnielsen.com):
He first made it into the Guinness Book of World Records in 1952 by pulling a 433-ton train 19.8 metres.
He weighed 465 pounds (at his heaviest) and stood about 6 foot 4 inches.
He could eat 25 chickens or 10 steaks at one sitting.
He claimed that he trained by running head-on into trees from a distance of 60 metres.
He sang with a soft, beautiful voice, and at one time wanted to tour with Tiny Tim.
He owned what was possibly the world's largest rocking chair — 4 meters high and 2 meters wide.
He believed he was descended from extraterrestrials.
As he grew older, he braided his dreadlocks into a club held together with masking tape and used this to play "hair golf."
Later in life, the only way to contact him was to leave a message at the Dunkin' Donuts in Rosemont, Canada.
George Kotolaris (1929-1990) is remembered in Seattle for two reasons. First, he was notorious for crashing funerals, weddings, anniversaries, parties, and any other event he could get into. Second, he kept a strange record of his life and interests by filing documents with the legal records department of Washington State. Shortandhappy.com explains:
George discovered that, due to a quirk of the law, anyone who pays the nominal per-page fee (currently $7) can record anything they want as a "title deed." So George immediately began using this recording system for purposes that were never even envisioned, much less intended, by the county planners who had instituted it.
Beginning in 1968, he and Pansy [his mother] traveled to the courthouse almost every business day with newspaper clippings, church programs and other items they wanted preserved. These early recordings are vague, but they establish some of George's major obsessions: Catholicism, abortion, cremation and urban renewal.
The nature of the recordings changed after Pansy suffered a stroke in the early 70s and was placed in the Columbia Lutheran Nursing Home. The newspaper clippings are replaced by what appear to be letters and notes to whoever will listen, documenting George's struggle to get Pansy out of the nursing home, and asking for help...
As time went on, George's recordings grew more sexually explicit, and officials at the courthouse censored many of them by placing sheets of paper over his text when they filmed it. Because of this, the last years of his life are maddeningly vague.
Here are some pictures of George taken around 1978.
The wikipedia page on eccentricity includes a test, of a kind, to help you determine if you're eccentric. I wonder how many WUvies would qualify as such?
According to studies, there are eighteen distinctive characteristics that differentiate a healthy eccentric person from a regular person or someone who has a mental illness (although some may not always apply). The first five are in most people regarded as eccentric:
• Nonconforming attitude
• Idealistic
• Intense curiosity
• Happy obsession with a hobby or hobbies
• Knew very early in his or her childhood they were different from others
• Highly intelligent
• Opinionated and outspoken
• Unusual living or eating habits
• Not interested in the opinions or company of others
• Mischievous sense of humor
Posted By: Alex | Date: Tue Jun 19, 2012 | Comments (14)
Category: Eccentrics
Category: Eccentrics, Collectors, Cats, Russia